


The Good of the Mission

by daenabenjen42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daenabenjen42/pseuds/daenabenjen42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Winter Soldier comes across a cat after destroying a surveillance camera...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good of the Mission

**Author's Note:**

> In between taking left and right turns at Albuquerque, I ended up needing to write something involving Soldat and a kitten. Only problem with giving Soldat a kitten? Very mean handlers. How to get around that... hmm...

The Soldier holstered the gun and simply stared at the destroyed camera for a long minute, briefly wondering if it mattered that there had been a witness after all. A silent, freestanding witness to what he'd just accomplished for the good of the mission, the good of the orders.

Orders that were to be obeyed, lest there be consequences... and pain... and other things. The Soldier refused to think of the other things... he simply wanted to go back to cold storage, where nothing hurt and no one asked anything of him.

An odd mewling sound reached his ears and the Soldier turned to scan his surroundings, certain he was alone, save the wrecked car and his now-deceased witnesses. Where was that sound coming from? It... was it coming from the back seat of the car? Why was a mewling thing in the back seat of the car?

Peering in the windows to get a better look in the light of the nearby street light, he found a pet carrier... with a set of reflective and eerie eyes looking up at him from the darkness. Opening the door of the car by the handle, he pulled the carrier out and shut the door again with his metal hand.

Holding up the pet carrier in the street light to get a better look, The Soldier found the mewling thing to be a juvenile tabby kitten. He blinked, surprised at finding a witness of the animal variety, and set the carrier down to get the animal out of it.

How he knew this was a tabby kitten and not some other kind of kitten, The Soldier was uncertain of as he held it in his flesh hand and petted it with his metal one. After a minute or two, the kitten began to lean into the caress and also to purr, and this is in turn brought a smile to The Soldier's lips. The kitten peered up at him and meowed, and continued to purr.

Reality had a way of coming back to him, even here on a practically deserted country road, and as he packed the extracted item on the back of the motorcycle with one hand, he cradled the kitten in the other, and glanced back at the carrier, still next to the car under the street light. He looked at it for long moments, knowing that if he kept the kitten, his handlers would take it from him by force. He wasn't about to let them know, or show up at the rendezvous with it... no.

~*~*~*~

It was early in the morning on the 17th of December, 1991, when Tony Stark woke to the sound of a meowing kitten. He stared at the pet carrier next to his bed, wondering where it had come from, as it had not been there when he'd gone to bed late the night before. Certainly, he couldn't have put it there while drunk, because he wasn't into the habit of collecting animals while intoxicated, nor had he had anything of the sort the night before.

Picking up the carrier, he looked in at the tabby kitten. "Hey there. Where did you come from?"

The kitten only answered him with a pitiful meow, which explained nothing but made him chuckle as he worked to get the kitten out of the carrier.

He named the kitten Alecto, for it was an endless mystery how the kitten ended up next to his bed.


End file.
